From:TheBahamasWeekly.com
NASA’s New Horizons Team Finds Haze, Flowing Ice on Pluto
By NASA
Jul 24, 2015 - 8:06:08 PM
Flowing ice and a
surprising extended haze are among the newest discoveries from NASA’s
New Horizons mission, which reveal distant Pluto to be an icy world of
wonders.
“We knew that a mission to Pluto would bring some surprises, and now
-- 10 days after closest approach -- we can say that our expectation has
been more than surpassed,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate
administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “With flowing ices,
exotic surface chemistry, mountain ranges, and vast haze, Pluto is
showing a diversity of planetary geology that is truly thrilling."
Just seven hours after closest approach, New Horizons aimed its Long
Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) back at Pluto, capturing sunlight
streaming through the atmosphere and revealing hazes as high as 80 miles
(130 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface. A preliminary analysis of the
image shows two distinct layers of haze -- one about 50 miles (80
kilometers) above the surface and the other at an altitude of about 30
miles (50 kilometers).
“My jaw was on the ground when I saw this first image of an alien
atmosphere in the Kuiper Belt,” said Alan Stern, principal investigator
for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder,
Colorado. “It reminds us that exploration brings us more than just
incredible discoveries -- it brings incredible beauty.”
Studying Pluto’s atmosphere provides clues as to what’s happening below.
“The hazes detected in this image are a key element in creating the
complex hydrocarbon compounds that give Pluto’s surface its reddish
hue,” said Michael Summers, New Horizons co-investigator at George Mason
University in Fairfax, Virginia.
Models suggest the hazes form when ultraviolet sunlight breaks up
methane gas particles -- a simple hydrocarbon in Pluto’s atmosphere. The
breakdown of methane triggers the buildup of more complex hydrocarbon
gases, such as ethylene and acetylene, which also were discovered in
Pluto’s atmosphere by New Horizons. As these hydrocarbons fall to the
lower, colder parts of the atmosphere, they condense into ice particles
that create the hazes. Ultraviolent sunlight chemically converts hazes
into tholins, the dark hydrocarbons that color Pluto’s surface.
Scientists previously had calculated temperatures would be too warm
for hazes to form at altitudes higher than 20 miles (30 kilometers)
above Pluto’s surface.
“We’re going to need some new ideas to figure out what’s going on,” said Summers.
The New Horizons mission also found in LORRI images evidence of
exotic ices flowing across Pluto’s surface and revealing signs of recent
geologic activity, something scientists hoped to find but didn’t
expect.
The new images show fascinating details within the Texas-sized plain,
informally named Sputnik Planum, which lies within the western half of
Pluto’s heart-shaped feature, known as Tombaugh Regio. There, a sheet of
ice clearly appears to have flowed -- and may still be flowing -- in a
manner similar to glaciers on Earth.
“We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and
Mars,” said mission co-investigator John Spencer of SwRI. “I'm really
smiling.”
Additionally, new compositional data from New Horizons’ Ralph
instrument indicate the center of Sputnik Planum is rich in nitrogen,
carbon monoxide, and methane ices.
“At Pluto’s temperatures of minus-390 degrees Fahrenheit, these ices
can flow like a glacier,” said Bill McKinnon, deputy leader of the New
Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team at Washington University
in St. Louis. “In the southernmost region of the heart, adjacent to the
dark equatorial region, it appears that ancient, heavily-cratered
terrain has been invaded by much newer icy deposits.”
View a simulated flyover using New Horizons’ close-approach images of
Sputnik Planum and Pluto’s newly-discovered mountain range, informally
named Hillary Montes, in the video below:
http://go.nasa.gov/1MMEdTb
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